Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  “How can you doubt-”

  “Under ordinary circumstances,” she cut him off, “if we were just debating the existence of the Progenitors for a heated scholarly debate then fine, I’d be willing to open my mind a little. But we are not! I want to find the rest of this mask because it poses a danger to thousands, even millions of people’s lives. But you,” she heard the bitterness crack into her voice. A lump formed in her throat. “You don’t care about that, do you? All you care about is proving that your father wasn’t crazy! All you care about is showing off to the world, saying ‘hey, look at me! I’m Benjamin King and I was right all along!’”

  “How dare you-”

  “You’re obsessed, Ben!” Her eyes were angry now and hot tears began to swell. “You’re obsessed with the mask. Just like Kha’um was. Just like your father was. You don’t care about anything else,” her body trembled as the words spilled out of her mouth. “Not the tachyon radiation or this super-duper bomb. Not the millions of lives that are at risk, and most certainly not about me!”

  The words smacked King in the face like a physical blow. “What do you mean? Of course I care about you.”

  “Do you?” A single tear finally squeezed out of her left eye. “When we were on the mountain-top, where was your priority? With me or the mask?”

  “We had to keep it safe.”

  “I was dying, Ben!” She broke down. The awkwardness that had consumed them since being reunited finally manifested itself. “By the time you got back to me, I might have died, just like Professor McKinney!”

  “You just said yourself, millions of lives-”

  “It was my life Ben! Am I proud that what you and Nate did kept a potentially terrible weapon away from the Chinese? Yes! I am so proud of you.” She touched his check, feeling the firm set of his jaw as it clenched. “But you weren’t thinking about millions of lives. You weren’t even thinking about my life. All you were thinking about was the mask. About keeping it away from the Chinese, about keeping it away from Nate-”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “Isn’t it? Tell me I’m wrong! Tell me you thought of me, of my safety and nothing else as you ran around those ancient ruins! Tell me you didn’t care if the mask was destroyed or lost so long as I was okay! Tell me I mattered more than some lump of space rock! Tell me-”

  “Sid,” he grasped her arms. She tried to pull away but he overpowered her, pulling her to him. She resisted a moment longer before breaking down against his powerful chest. He wrapped his muscular arms around her lithe body, holding her close as the stress and tension of the past days racked through her.

  “You know, you haven’t once asked me if I am okay,” she mumbled against his chest.

  “Langley told me you had taken well to treatment. That you were fine.”

  She pushed back and looked up into his dark eyes. Her own glistened with moisture and her cheeks were run through with teary streams. She looked so vulnerable and so hurt that King felt his heart skip a beat. An angry jolt of self-loathing shot through him.

  “That’s not what I meant, Ben.”

  She was right. Although Alex Langley had confirmed that both she and Nadia had been treated for the radiation sickness they had suffered and were both fit and well, he hadn’t asked her personally how she was. There was more than just the physical aspect to what they had all lived through. There was the emotional. The man she loved had left her on the summit of a mountain at the hands of Chinese soldiers suffering from an illness that had already killed several of her friends and peers. Then, except for a brief reunion before she was shipped off to a state-side hospital and he had elected to remain behind to look after the mask, they had been separated for days. She had been kept in an isolation ward, fed drugs and undergone tests while he had been interrogated by American, British and U.N. officials.

  And, after all of that, he couldn’t remember what the first words he had spoken to her had been but, sure enough, he had not once asked her directly how she felt.

  In fact, he couldn’t remember thinking about anything except the Moon Mask since the moment he had laid eyes on it.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, cupping her chin in one hand.

  “I don’t want to lose you, Ben,” she whimpered.

  “You’re not going to. Not ever,” he promised but the sadness in her eyes only seemed to intensify.

  “I already am,” she whispered.

  He couldn’t think of what else he could say to her. Instead, his hand drifted to his pocket, his fingers gripped the ring that he still had not been brave enough to produce.

  “Sid, I-”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Alex Langley said uncomfortably as he pushed into the room. He halted in the doorway, his eyes scanning the unkempt state of the room and the two lovers embracing in the middle of the chaos.

  Sid held his gaze for a second longer and then turned towards the ambassador. King released the breath he didn’t know he had been holding and let the ring drop back into his pocket.

  Alexander Langley looked almost dead on his feet as he made his way further into the room. His tired eyes were bloodshot and large bags hung under them.

  “Any luck?” he asked the two scientists.

  King glanced at the strewn books and the computer monitors. “We’re still running a comparative mapping program to see if the map we recovered can be matched to any particular piece of coastline but, with no rough location, no scale and, bearing in mind coastal erosion patterns over the last three hundred years, it’s a long shot.”

  “Ben did find something out about Edward Pryce,” Sid said, wiping her eyes uncomfortably and leading Langley to one of the monitors. On it was displayed a digitized copy of a very old, dog-eared, yellow stained document.

  “What’s this?” the ambassador asked.

  “These are Edward Pryce’s release papers,” King explained. He glanced at Sid and their eyes locked for several long moments before he focussed on his work.

  “After he was found aboard the Raptor,” he explained, “he was admitted to an asylum on Jamaica. But, three years later, he was released into the custody of this man.” He tapped the screen and it zoomed in on a scrawled name. “Jonathon Hawk.”

  “Who was he?”

  “The son of a wealthy British businessman,” Sid told him. “There’s not a lot of information on him.”

  “Then how does this help us?”

  “I think it offers further support to my theory that Pryce chased Kha’um around the world, both of them,” he glanced significantly at Sid, “obsessed with finding the Moon Mask. Also, now knowing the name of Kha’um’s ship, I searched for any references to the Hand of Freedom. I found one, in June 1708, which mentions a ship, bearing that name, passing a watch-post on Malta.”

  “In the Mediterranean,” Langley said needlessly. “So how does that help us?” he asked again.

  “The sighting comes only days after the report I found of ‘The Black Death’ off the coast of Tunisia. It proves we’re on the right track. That the remains we found in the Freedom are those of The Black Death, aka, Kha’um, and that he sailed into the Mediterranean. I think, in search of another piece of the mask.”

  “The Med is a big place, Doctor, surrounded by a lot of countries.”

  “That’s right, and he could have found the mask in any of them. The point is,” he said, glancing at the interconnecting door as Nadia came in from her own ad-hoc science lab, “that Kha’um searched for and I think found the other pieces of the mask. He hid them in one hoard, probably along with other treasure, to keep them safe before embarking on his final voyage into the Amazon. So, all we have to do is find that hoard of pirates treasure. We’ve got a map, or part of one anyway, and I know where to get the rest.”

  “All we need,” Sid said to Langley, “is ‘a go.’”

  Langley mused through all the information he had just been given and then nodded. “The majority of the council vote
d in favour of sending the three of you, under the protection of American soldiers, to retrieve the rest of the mask.”

  A look of relief crossed King’s face and he felt Sid’s eyes watching him. But he couldn’t help it. He’d been given an opportunity to find the rest of the mask.

  “That’s great,” he said. “When do we go?”

  “You’ll be shipping out in the morning.”

  “I’m afraid not, Mister Ambassador,” Nadia’s voice suddenly cut in. Everyone turned to look at her serious expression.

  “We have a problem.”

  23:

  The Castle

  United States Disciplinary Barracks,

  Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,

  U.S.A.,

  The helicopter raced through the dead of night, its rotor blades whirring as its pilot altered its pitch, coming in low over the brightly lit Fort Leavenworth Army Base. Bright halogen spotlights moved with menacing grace, bringing sections of the establishment into glaringly brilliant focus, outlining the stark silhouettes of walls and fences topped by razor wire, the encircling trench and the guard towers beyond.

  Built by prisoners between 1875 and 1921, the largest barracks, dubbed, due to its domineering presence and fortified persona, The Castle, had been torn down in 2004. Nevertheless, the new facility, despite being portrayed as ‘brighter and airier’ was no less of a fortification than its predecessor. Situated in the middle of the one hundred and eighty year old army base and surrounded by fourteen foot high fences and a multitude of high-tech surveillance and security equipment, the new, state-of-the-art Castle was home to the American military’s most dangerous men.

  The Department of Defense’s only maximum security prison, USDB housed five hundred court-martialled male inmates. Most of the prisoners were enlisted men or officers who had been convicted of rape or murder, but a small handful were held there convicted of offences related to National Security.

  Alexander Langley stared through the forward windshield of the helicopter as the pilot radioed in his clearance and began his descent.

  Beyond mere exhaustion now, Langley’s eyes were bleary; his head pounded and his body craved sleep. For a moment, he mused upon how fragile he had become since retiring from the forces. But, he supposed, twisting the arm of the most powerful man on earth could be draining.

  “Absolutely no way!” the President of the United States of America had practically shouted at him. “Totally out of the question! I can’t believe you’re even bringing this to me! You of all people, Alex!”

  For his part, Langley hadn’t let John Harper’s outburst faze him. He had held his ground, staring through the teleconference suite at U.N. Headquarters, his image and voice being transmitted into the identical suite in the White House.

  Leering back at him, each of their faces displayed on six-foot tall, high definition screens to either side of the president was Sec Def Mick Kane and CIA Director Jason Briggs.

  “I wouldn’t, Mister President,” he had replied with all the diplomacy he now wielded instead of an assault rifle. “If I thought there was any other way. But the fact of the matter is, sir; we need him.”

  Harper’s face had darkened. “The man is a traitor,” he snarled. “A traitor to his country, to his people, to his uniform. To me,” he added. “He took an oath to protect the citizens of this country, the office of the president and, having abandoned that oath, he committed perhaps the vilest betrayal of all. He betrayed the men and women under his command. He has the blood of U.S. citizens and U.S. soldiers on his hands. He escaped justice once, Alex, but fate has given us, and the families of the dead, a second chance to see that justice enacted.”

  “With all due respect, Mister President, I am aware of his history.”

  “You’re aware? Damn it, Alex, he betrayed you too!” Harper had practically roared at him. “When he escaped Leavenworth, he set you up for the fall, made it look like you had helped him escape. A great man like you had to throw in your military career because of a cowardly little traitor like him. Now you want me to set him free? Give him a presidential pardon? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I really can’t!”

  Silence had settled over the four occupants of the two rooms then. Langley had seen the president’s face, flushed red a moment ago, struggle to relax. He’d also noticed Jason Briggs’ eyes boring into him through the digital stream. Trying to read my thoughts, Jason? He’d thought sardonically. He’d always known that his previous superior had considered him an accomplice in the escape, despite the bullet to the knee.

  “No, Alex,” Harper almost whispered the words, reigning in his emotions. “Nathan Raine is going to burn in hell for what he has done to this country.”

  Langley waited for a heartbeat and then matched the president’s tone. “I don’t doubt it, Mister President. But, sir, I’m concerned that if we don’t include Raine on this mission, then we will all, the people of this country and of the whole free world, burn right there alongside him.”

  The dramatic statement had finally broken through the president’s thick skin. A flash of worry flickered in his eyes. “What are your thoughts, Jason?”

  Briggs continued to peer down his beak-like nose at Langley, his shrewd eyes calculating. “This establishment, this country, trained Nathan Raine to be the best of the best. There is no doubting that the man we all once knew would be not only a great asset, but could pull this mission off single-handedly, if he had to,” he replied carefully. “But it is that very ability that concerns me, Mister President. He is a loose cannon, and if he again turns his sights on us, I’m scared to think of what might happen.”

  “But what’s done is done,” Mick Kane spoke up unexpectedly. All eyes had turned to him, a flash of anger in Briggs’.

  “I don’t mean that callously, Mister President,” he clarified. “There is no doubt, nor denying what he did. He went off the rails and people, good people, died because of it. But, if your intelligence is correct,” he glanced significantly at Briggs, “then he has spent the last three years in hiding, eking out an existence flying tourists to their rich resorts.” His eyes flicked in Langley’s direction, a brief nod of allegiance. Langley liked the Sec Def. Both former soldiers, they knew what it was like out on the battlefield far more than the politicians they served.

  “The mighty have fallen, sir,” he concluded. “He has nowhere to go, no prospects, and no future. Presidential immunity in exchange for his help. I don’t believe he would throw that away.”

  “He may be a loose cannon, Mister President,” Langley had cut in then, sensing his moment, “but without him, mark my words, without a shadow of a doubt, this mission will fail.”

  Harper’s face had still been angry, Langley could see. His eyes burned with hatred. Raine’s history with the president was personal. He wasn’t just any old soldier that had gone rogue. He was the man selected by the president to command his own personal army, and he had betrayed both the professional oath that he took to the President and the personal promise he had made to John Harper.

  “It seems that fate has dealt me a losing hand,” the president had finally said. “To protect this country, I must make a deal with the devil.”

  Well, Hell certainly is the place to do that, Mister President, Langley thought now as he was guided by three prison guards under the still spinning rotors of the chopper and into The Castle.

  It was a silent place, especially at this late hour, the muted stillness broken only by the occasional slamming of huge metal doors and the clanging home of giant locks.

  He was passed through numerous security checks, an inordinate amount of time being taken as the guards, or ‘corrections specialists’ as they were referred to, scanned the metal plate in his knee.

  In a sadistically whimsical part of his brain, he mused that his torn knee, after three years, had finally come full circle.

  With very little care for his elevated status, the guards finally decided that he was carryi
ng no weapons or other forbidden objects and he was led deeper into the facility.

  Composed of three, two-tier triangular pods, the facility covered fifty one acres of land. The white walls were broken by solid metal doors and peering inside a handful that were vacant, he saw barren cells, empty save for a metal cot, a toilet and a sink.

  After what seemed like an endless march, accompanied only by the pounding of his and the guard’s boots, the jangle of keys and the electronic buzz of mag-locks, he arrived on Death Row.

  Despite its airy, sterile atmosphere, compared to the cold grey, dungeon-like aura of the original Castle, USDB Death Row truly was a place of the damned. Reserved for some of the most vile creatures in the world, rapists and murderers, trained in the art of killing by the United States Armed Forces, this was their purgatory; their last stop before the chair, then Hell.

  Traitors, all of them, reserved for only the lowest level of the Underworld.

  They ultimately halted outside of a thick metal door set into the middle of a bland wall of breeze blocks, supported, Langley knew, by concrete and iron bars.

  Even in a maximum security prison where escape was impossible, this cell was the ultimate in containment and solitary confinement. Only two men had ever escaped from the United States Disciplinary Barracks. In 1988, David Newman had made it all the way to Kansas City before being caught four days later. Nathan Raine, however, had been on the run for three years and was only caught due to a stroke of severe bad luck.

  He wasn’t going to escape again.

  Other maximum security prisoners were confined for twenty-three hours a day. Nathan Raine was confined for one hour extra. He had been trained first by the Army, then Delta Force before being selected to join America’s most elite and secretive special operations force, the CIA’s Special Operations Group.

  Often under the direct command of the President of the United States, the ‘SOG’ had conducted clandestine operations around the world for decades. Right from its earliest incarnation as part of the OSS during the Second World War, the Special Activities Division and the Special Operations Group, SAD/SOG had been on every major playing field on the world stage. From Cuba to Vietnam, Columbia to Afghanistan, SAD/SOG operatives had conducted raids and sabotage, assassination and hostage rescue, counter-intelligence and guerrilla warfare for almost seventy years. They carried nothing which could identify them with the U.S. Government, they had no history, no identity. If they were captured, the government would deny all knowledge of their existence. They were men and women who operated outside of the normal chain of command, outside of the law even. Working in small groups or often alone, recruiting native armies and conducting unconventional warfare, they had toppled governments and overthrown regimes all in the name of U.S. National Security.